Remembering the best and worst about Windows 10 on the year it technically “died”

Remembering Windows 10's rollout can help diagnose what ails Windows 11.

See full article...

 

[DarthSlack]

Serious question from a very committed Linux user: "Google Drive works as well as it does on Windows"? Can you confirm what client you're using for that, and what you find effective?

(Not that I think GDrive actually works well on Windows either -especially for syncing shared files/folders, but it's a better "my wife can work it if I keel over" option than syncthing)

I use Google Drive on Linux like I do on Windows: Through the browser. That's mainly because I don't use Google for backup, just for file sharing if there's no other option. For backup/syncing shared folders I use NextCloud which works great.

Does Windows? Serious question.

Windows has the same great email client as Linux: Thunderbird.

 

[DistinctivelyCanuck]

I first gave you an upvote, but withdrew it after reading that last bit.

I've been using Linux, doing serious things for 27 years, thank you very much.

100% my fault: sorry.

My point WRT a "basic machine" for Mail +Web -> Linux is a far better choice. None of the windows overhead and misery and costs

For hardcore, hardcore development -> Also Linux. But MacOS is also a damned fine place to be.
But generally speaking 'hardcore development' folks will be willing to play the "what distro"
Whereas in a lot of cases, lets say you're trying to help someone out who just needs "basic mail + web" a basic linux distro would work, at which point, I then end up stuck on my earlier point of "i don't have time to chase distros"

I'm grateful to this whole thread for the comments about Linux Mint -> so Linux Mint is worth keeping in mind when I need to help someone who is getting killed by windows 11, can't afford the new hardware being forced on them by MS +Intel for Win 11.

I also laughed about Firefox being a memory pig
but I'll be damned if I run Chrome/Edge, and adblocking doesn't work as well in Safari (or maybe I just haven't found the correct path)

 

[DistinctivelyCanuck]

We've had a really good rant through here: and there's one thing I didn't pick off in the discussion.

a few comments about how FF is constantly an absolute memory glutton:

i agree..

So, I generally use MacOS Safari, but I don't find the adblock experience as seamless as ublock in FF and to hell with Google Chrome and MS Edge.

Is there a general feeling of a good "not googlized" nor "MS data sponging" browser for either Win or MacOS?

 

[NC Now]

and adblocking doesn't work as well in Safari (or maybe I just haven't found the correct path)

Ghostery is pretty neat.

 

[foofoo22]

Every second version of non-DOS and non-NT (okay, post merge is more NT than not, but it's still the desktop line) Windows has been garbage, except 95/98

95? Great
98? Great
ME? Garbage
XP? Great
Vista? Garbage
7? Great
8? Garbage
10? Great
11? Garbage

(great may be too kind, but not a pile of dogshit)

It's like a terrible version of Intels tick-tock

Stop with this silly meme/talking point. And you missed Windows 2000 in your copy paste list.

Here's my $1, since Windows 2000 MS has continually muddled the OS GUI as each product manager tries to leave his/her mark. Each version seen as great just stepped back briefly some of the especially stupid GUI decisions before continuing with the crud.

 

[Arrakeen]

I really didn't have much issue with Windows 10 in any form until the last year and half, maybe two years. Something about Windows 11 made Windows 10 far more obnoxious to use, in large part because of the pushiness mentioned in the article; but also any time I've had to update my OS in that period, my computer fails and has to repair drives before it can finish starting up. Sometimes the system can troubleshoot and resolve the issues by itself, but just as often I'm pulling my hair out for days trying to recover/remediate/roll back. It just plain sucks now.

Windows 11 isn't even a consideration. When the time comes, when I'm truly, totally fed-up with the run-around... I'm joining you folks on Linux. Windows was the OS of my youth (started with 95 and 98)... but as the world and I both change, it truly seems nothing is constant.

Except war... war never changes...

 

[LetsGetTechnical]

When it’s sold out of a ‘box’, completely turnkey consumer-ready to go, with no need to search the internet for this driver or that driver, or this application or that application, with no head scratching configuration requirements, then your statement will be true.

This has been an option for many, many years. Drivers have also gotten much better. It sounds like you haven't set up Linux in a long time.

Anyways, all this BS MS is doing is why I've stuck to dual booting Win 10 LTSC in kiosk mode basically, and I use Pop_OS for my main gaming needs. It's truly incredible how good gaming is under Steam Proton. They really stole MS's golden goose while they were busy pushing Copilot into everything.

 

[SubWoofer2]

The operating system can be tamed with effort.

Oh my. Australian user here. Sole trader, working for people who work for Defence and have data sovereignty interests. The Australian Government has a setup guide for W11 so it - let's call it what it is, spyware - is constrained about transmitting "home". Certainly I do not feel like I am the customer for this product that I pay for, and yes Dave I'm afraid I cannot open the pod bay doors any more for you is the user experience. The professionals at my computer shop describe W11 as a form of malware and that Microsoft's neglecting to mention this is a marketing failure.

A tip for people who circumvent the "please sign in to your microsoft account" when setting up W11. Many people have several on-line identities and/or believe the microsoft account to be intrusive and a floodway to adverts, and so avoid it. Be warned that under that scenario Microsoft has enabled you to lose all access to your laptop if you do a Safe Mode reboot. Here's how:

Me: I’m just setting up the scanner which worked on W10. Should be three steps.
Windows: Cool. Have twenty-seven.

Me: Epson driver’s stuck. Fine. I’ll use Safe Mode.
Windows: Sure. Here you go! I will now open Bitlocker for you! Pleased to be of service.

me: What BitLocker?
Windows: Enter your 48-digit recovery key and then you are in Safe Mode!

Me: I’ve never installed BitLocker in my life.
Windows: Doesn’t matter. It’s on. Always was.

Me: Where is the key?
Windows: In your Microsoft account.

Me: Which one?
Windows: Not that one.

Me: That’s the only one I have.
Windows: Then that’s awkward.

Me: I've had a good look, and the vendor never set up a key, and I never did.
Windows: Yes. That's definitely awkward.

Me: Didn’t know I needed to.
Windows: No, I didn’t tell you that. No need to worry your pretty little head about trivialities like a mandated complete system recovery access key when you’re setting up something as important as Windows 11.

Me: So you’re telling me if I press one more key to say Yes to Safe Mode —
Windows: —you permanently lock yourself out of your work laptop.

Me: And this is because I tried to scan a document?
Windows: Correct.

Me: So safe mode isn’t safe.
Windows: No. It’s a trap door.

Me: And I was one keystroke away from falling through it.
Windows: Yes.

Me: Right. I’m going to lie down.
Windows: Enabling encryption without telling you is all part of our customer service! Please rate us highly, and keep subscribing! Share and enjoy!

TL; DR: "Windows 11 will automatically enable device encryption. This happens even if you do not sign in with a Microsoft account. It happens with W10 upgrades. In this situation, Windows does not clearly alert the user that a recovery key is required. Nor does it say where any such key will be stored. Before using Safe Mode, recovery options, or making any boot-level changes, you must manually generate a BitLocker recovery key while the system is running normally and unlocked, and save that key offline (for example on an external drive or paper or tattoo). Failing to do so can result in permanent loss of access to the device, aka "bricked"."

Edited to add: I'm a novice at computers. But over November I've converted the home PC to linux mint cinnamon. W11 is too scary.

 

[Boskone]

You are NOT talking about the typical user. Business or home. They don't want to PICK A DESKTOP. They want to use the computer.

Then just use whatever comes with it. Unless a distro ships with Ratpoison or something, it won't be worst than switching from Windows to MacOS.

 

[kaleberg]

The article could have started and quickly ended with that. Another sign of enshitification of late stage capitalism.

This article on Windows 11 reminds me of the articles about modern television sets which also require internet connection, accepting surveillance and forced advertising. Pundits wonder why people have lost their faith in technology. Clearly, they haven't been using a computer or watching television lately. I'm sure there are other product areas with these challenges. Automobiles anyone? It's definitely late stage capitalism. Socialism may have its discontents, but at least it offers room for technological progress.

 

[kaleberg]

Every second version of non-DOS and non-NT (okay, post merge is more NT than not, but it's still the desktop line) Windows has been garbage, except 95/98

95? Great
98? Great
ME? Garbage
XP? Great
Vista? Garbage
7? Great
8? Garbage
10? Great
11? Garbage

(great may be too kind, but not a pile of dogshit)

It's like a terrible version of Intels tick-tock

Alternatively, like the Star Trek movies.

 

[Antron Argaiv]

Home Linux user full time since the early 2000s. It doesn't suck any worse than Windows

 

[J.King]

You are NOT talking about the typical user. Business or home. They don't want to PICK A DESKTOP. They want to use the computer.

I don't really understand the logic of this argument. If they just want to use a computer, they should just use whatever operating system it came with. If they're dissatisfied with Windows and are being (ahem) picky about the operating system, maybe they will be picky about the desktop, too? I don't think it follows that choice of desktop environments is necessarily a problem.

 

[agt499]

Windows has the same great email client as Linux: Thunderbird

Sometimes I accidentally look over users shoulders, or they happen to be screen-sharing with me, while they try to find mail using Outlook.

It causes me physical pain to see how utterly inferior the search is in what people seem to consider the "great" mail client.

People can't generally believe it when I show them Thunderbird's faceted search (where you take a search term and refine by a calendar histogram or people or attachments or all of those), then they go back to using Outlook and losing an hour a day looking for stuff they would find in a minute in Thunderbird...

Which brings me back to the point, human inertia is a much stronger force than the pure physics variety.

 

[Made in Hurry]

I remember buying an Xbox and then subscribing to Xbox Live not that many years ago. I had an Office 365 sub as well, and while Windows 10 was not Windows 7, it was not completely awful other than i have always hated the inconsistent UI.
Fast forward a few years and i am mostly using either My M4 Mac Mini or Linux Mint on the converted computers that are all Windows 11 compliant, giving Microsoft none of my money anymore. Surely, i am not alone, and Microsoft is paying attention to that a lot of their nerdy userbase is switching houses?

I came from BeOS a long time ago, then after i really became a Windows user until i switched to Linux Mint when Recall was announced. I have had very few issues, mostly with an Acer Swift 16" laptop that is not that well supported.
I have converted a lot of users over to Windows as well, even a few small businesses with very modest needs, but it saved them a lot of money in hardware upgrades and there have been no complaints.

I suggest donating a little bit to whatever your favorite Linux distribution is even if it is a one-time thing, i am sure it will help speed up development.

 

[Mechjaz]

Pity the poor Product Manager for TurboTax. Myself, a long-time TurboTax user, will need to switch to H&R Block (formerly TaxCut). Not sure why Intuit decided not to support Win10. 31% fewer users (apart from those who can be tricked into their online offering), likely all going to H&R. Not sure if there is some required Win11 API that mandates TT cannot support Win10. Good on the PM for H&R though arguing to keep Win10 support. 31% more H&R users is going to look good on his/her annual review HTH, NSC

I won't. Intuit has worked hard to calcify obscure tax law (what good is tax software if a regular person can just read the forms and do the taxes?) and destroy public good initiatives like free tax preparation to ensure their own trough is filled with the dollars of the cheated and the manipulated. Fuck TurboTax, and fuck the product manager trading their ethics away for $115k a year at a company that costs the United States billions of dollars in fiercely-guarded golden-goose makework.

 

[NC Now]

about modern television sets which also require internet connection, accepting surveillance and forced advertising.

So far I've been able to set them up without an internet connection. I use AppleTV to play my "suff". Every month or 6 I plug them into my LAN, tell them to update, then unplug the LAN cable. Once or twice a week the TV says it can't find a network. I press home on the Apple TV and I'm back to a happy place.

A warning my Vizios hard remember a Wi-Fi connection and the password. And will only forget it with a reset to factory defaults. So I never enter any Wi-Fi credentials.

The above seems to be true with Samsung TVs I've setup.

 

[NC Now]

I don't really understand the logic of this argument.

People keep making the aruguement that users can pick from (what to many) seems like an infinite set of options. Most people don't want this. At all. They want a simple to use, can ask a friend questions, and email the kids / grand kids / teachers, and open links in emails. (This last one can be serious problematic for some of us nerds unless you accept that many consumers want to deal with Facebook, TikTok, etc...)

 

[Waco]

As someone who just finally migrated his main desktop rig to Linux (after decades of gaming / normal use on Windows)...good riddance.

I've been using Linux for school and then work for decades. Valve has really done magic with how easy it is to get everything working without much headache at all.

I could be diving into logs to fix things, patch random crap, etc...but I have yet to need to do that for anything. For the stuff that just absolutely refuses to run in Linux via Proton/WINE/whatever...I just have a Windows VM for that.

 

[jeffpiatt]

Oh my. Australian user here. Sole trader, working for people who work for Defence and have data sovereignty interests. The Australian Government has a setup guide for W11 so it - let's call it what it is, spyware - is constrained about transmitting "home". Certainly I do not feel like I am the customer for this product that I pay for, and yes Dave I'm afraid I cannot open the pod bay doors any more for you is the user experience. The professionals at my computer shop describe W11 as a form of malware and that Microsoft's neglecting to mention this is a marketing failure.

A tip for people who circumvent the "please sign in to your microsoft account" when setting up W11. Many people have several on-line identities and/or believe the microsoft account to be intrusive and a floodway to adverts, and so avoid it. Be warned that under that scenario Microsoft has enabled you to lose all access to your laptop if you do a Safe Mode reboot. Here's how:

Me: I’m just setting up the scanner which worked on W10. Should be three steps.
Windows: Cool. Have twenty-seven.

Me: Epson driver’s stuck. Fine. I’ll use Safe Mode.
Windows: Sure. Here you go! I will now open Bitlocker for you! Pleased to be of service.

me: What BitLocker?
Windows: Enter your 48-digit recovery key and then you are in Safe Mode!

Me: I’ve never installed BitLocker in my life.
Windows: Doesn’t matter. It’s on. Always was.

Me: Where is the key?
Windows: In your Microsoft account.

Me: Which one?
Windows: Not that one.

Me: That’s the only one I have.
Windows: Then that’s awkward.

Me: I've had a good look, and the vendor never set up a key, and I never did.
Windows: Yes. That's definitely awkward.

Me: Didn’t know I needed to.
Windows: No, I didn’t tell you that. No need to worry your pretty little head about trivialities like a mandated complete system recovery access key when you’re setting up something as important as Windows 11.

Me: So you’re telling me if I press one more key to say Yes to Safe Mode —
Windows: —you permanently lock yourself out of your work laptop.

Me: And this is because I tried to scan a document?
Windows: Correct.

Me: So safe mode isn’t safe.
Windows: No. It’s a trap door.

Me: And I was one keystroke away from falling through it.
Windows: Yes.

Me: Right. I’m going to lie down.
Windows: Enabling encryption without telling you is all part of our customer service! Please rate us highly, and keep subscribing! Share and enjoy!

TL; DR: "Windows 11 will automatically enable device encryption. This happens even if you do not sign in with a Microsoft account. It happens with W10 upgrades. In this situation, Windows does not clearly alert the user that a recovery key is required. Nor does it say where any such key will be stored. Before using Safe Mode, recovery options, or making any boot-level changes, you must manually generate a BitLocker recovery key while the system is running normally and unlocked, and save that key offline (for example on an external drive or paper or tattoo). Failing to do so can result in permanent loss of access to the device, aka "bricked"."

Edited to add: I'm a novice at computers. But over November I've converted the home PC to linux mint cinnamon. W11 is too scary.

windows 11 only encrypts the drive on home devices if you enable the Microsoft account login if you use a local account they lock out the entire function until you move to one offline bit-locker only works on Pro and enterprise versions because offline domain accounts need it for business requirements like HIPPA a MS 365 business login will also encrypt a drive

 

[NowIsTheTimeOfMonsters]

I'm fortunate to be able to continue getting by with XP for my home needs. I use my phone on the internet more than my Chromebook, transferring files to and from phone to PC via USB cable. When my PC eventually dies (*) I'll gladly pay for a "new" version of my 19-year-old set-up - I don't have a use or patience for MS' current intrusive, bloated crap.

 

[noraar]

I’m there IT manner for a mid-sized non-profit (100ish employees), and we’ve a good mix for Max and PCs. Whenever we hire a new employee, or get a new computer for an existing employee, I like to set it up nicely and clean it up and customize it however the employee would like. It takes me about 30 or so minutes to fully set up a Mac, whereas we can take close to two hours at times to set up a Windows machine. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, and Windows sides not to constantly reinstall the crapware it comes with, I can get it going in an hour or so. But those times are a few and far between.

 

[destar]

Oh my. Australian user here. Sole trader, working for people who work for Defence and have

<snip>

me: What BitLocker?
Windows: Enter your 48-digit recovery key and then you are in Safe Mode!

Me: I’ve never installed BitLocker in my life.
Windows: Doesn’t matter. It’s on. Always was.

Windows: Enabling encryption without telling you is all part of our customer service! Please rate us highly, and keep subscribing! Share and enjoy!



Edited to add: I'm a novice at computers. But over November I've converted the home PC to linux mint cinnamon. W11 is too scary.

had a similar experience... it was one of many nails that have made me not go to win11

 

[Dr.Kamiya]

I suspect MS will appoint a new CEO when AI has run out of steam and it's time to make software usable for people again. Satya Nadella did a lot of things right when he started off his tenure as CEO. Windows 10, all the accessibility stuff for Xbox and gaming.

It seems to be a trend that when a new CEO starts off he does most of the the right things in order to create distance from an unpopular predecessor. Nadella has definitely slipped into the realm of the unpopular with Copilot being shoved into every MS product.

 

[Vnend]

Linux is the new Windows.

Bite your tongue*!

*That sounded better than the more accurate thought, which was "gnaw your fingers off!"

 

[PhilipStorry]

Everyone waxes poetic about XP. But 2000 was so much better than XP (everyone convientely forgets how lousy/buggy XP was until SP2). Win2k had a lovely straightforward GUI, modern support etc, XP is where a lot of interface crude start to pollute windows -- i think XP has so much fondness is for most users it was their first NT based Windows. I will say 7 was nearly as great as Windows 2000

XP also had a couple of other "improvements". IIRC they changed the driver subsystem for printing & scanning, which broke a lot of devices for people upgrading - it was a good long term move, but a lot of manufacturers were slow to ship new drivers (if they ever did). These days many printers and scanners are so cheap as to be commodity devices you'd just replace easily.

Back then a cheap flatbad scanner might be a couple of hundred bucks, before we adjust for inflation. A lot of people upgraded only to be faced with the option of downgrading again or buying an expensive replacement scanner/printer.

The other major improvement was the DOS VM, which gained SoundBlaster emulation and a couple of other tricks to improve compatibility with DOS games. It was OK, but DOSBox on Windows 2000 was already better. There's a similar problem here of people upgrading hoping their old games would work, only to be disappointed. At least DOSBox still worked and was free...

There was also the issue of hardware requirements. XP wasn't a massively demanding release, but if you were upgrading from a Windows 98 machine then you were likely to be at the very low end of the hardware requirements, and it didn't perform very well down there. For those of us coming from Windows 2000 the hardware requirements were fine, but they were a nasty shock for the gaming crowd coming from Windows 9x, and that didn't help XP's reputation.

By the time Service Pack 2 had come out most people had bought appropriate upgrades, and the OEMs were no longer shipping machines that were such low specs as to be a bad experience, so time fixed this issue eventually.

Which nicely segues us to the fact that time is what made Windows XP a "great release" in many people's minds.

There were two long delays that Windows XP benefited from. Firstly when everyone connected to the internet and Microsoft found their software so insecure that they had to drop everything and focus on patching - which resulted in XP2, but drew away resources from working on the XP replacement codenamed Longhorn.

Secondly Longhorn was a nightmare project of over-promising and under-estimating, which meant that Microsoft eventually abandoned it and switched to building Vista on top of the Windows Server core.

By the time Vista shipped everyone was used to XP, all their niggles had been addressed and it was like a pair of comfy old shoes that were well broken in.

Lastly there's the comparison with Vista itself, which took security much more seriously but was also big, slow, buggy, and annoying. It didn't feel like a step forward until service pack 2 finally optimised it enough (much like Windows XP), and so it gained a reputation as a poor release.

Vista was never really given the advantage of time - Microsoft effectively waited for the hardware to catch up (as it had for XP itself), then took SP3, called it Windows 7, and struck whilst the iron was hot. But that's a story for a different day...

 

[crosslink]

I got so very much good computing done (mostly related to the materials testing workflow including analysis) using the enterprise versions of Win7 through Win10. I won’t talk about the Win9x days though, and never had to deal with Win8 at work.)

I actually got a bit emotional turning in my well-used T480/Win10 machine when I retired.

At home I shut down my last Win10 box last October. As others have mentioned, the advent of Win11 seemed to correspond to MS marketing showing up in the Win10 system notifications, which developed a way of resetting themselves regardless of how I had set them.

Now if you look at my household, you’ll find Ubuntu Server, Mac OS and Linux Mint Cinnamon. Each has its imperfections, but honestly I’m pretty happy with how low-friction the ecosystem has become.

 

[DistinctivelyCanuck]

Ghostery is pretty neat.

Thanks, hadn't heard of it: will go explore.

 

[papito10]

I am playing FarCry 5 on Mint right now (Alienware), and I am never going back. Minted my old Macbook as well. I have two small kids, and I MADE the time, since Microsoft just kept pissing me off.

 

[stoattiep]

Having read the article and then sleeping on it, I disagree with the premise. After the Windows 7 -> 8 debacle, I'm not sure Windows 10 did anything good for the future of Windows. Supporting new hardware is a requirement for any operating system so they had to do that. Backtracking on the dog's vomit Windows 8 start menu isn't a true win for user interface design - they had to change it because no one was switching to 8. The UWP-based settings app was always going to be terrible because you'd have to rewrite 25 years of Control Panel features so it wasn't (and still isn't) feature complete.

Windows 11 is everything wrong with Windows 10, but cranked to, you guessed it, 11.

 

[Skwerl]

I simply do not understand in a world in which MacOS is a choice, and with Linux right there for "basic use" for someone who simply wants "the web and email" how Windows keeps getting worse and worse and more difficult, and more enshitified.

Yes, you definitely do not understand. Ask a system admin, you know the overstressed person who has to keep hundreds of machines running and not tampered with and in compliance with various laws and security levels (e.g. SOC2) and deal with loads of user questions and support atop that?

 

[Skwerl]

When it’s sold out of a ‘box’, completely turnkey consumer-ready to go, with no need to search the internet for this driver or that driver, or this application or that application, with no head scratching configuration requirements, then your statement will be true.

It's definitely better than it used to be a few years ago, especially if we're talking a desktop box and not some laptop with a bunch of weird shit in it. Linux is probably fine for a lot of people as long as nothing goes wrong. That's where the shit hits the fan.

 

[Skwerl]

Linux users are all assholes. Im convinced.

No, no, no, no. Most aren't. There's just a large handful of loud Linux users that like to shitpost smug junk to show their insecurity. Don't confuse the asshole minority with the quiet majority.

 

[Causification]

This is not so mysterious. Microsoft did not bring back the Start menu: they brought in a new from-scratch one, and if you used it on day one like I did, it was laughably bad. I'm not surprised obscure, hard-to-discover features like the one you mention (which I no idea existed) were not re-implemented, since they had such a hard time implementing such basic functionality as the ability to have more than 256 items in the menu.

"Drag and drop" is one of the core, basic usage principles of Windows. What other way do people create desktop shortcuts? Do other people go looking in the Program Files folder for the program they want a shortcut for, find the executable by hand, then right click on it and hit "Send to Desktop (Create Shortcut)" ?

 

[zeppelin101]

Windows LTSC solves 99% of the issues. It's incredible.

 

[Mordac]

I didn't know there were two versions. I was going to post that Windows 11 here in Europe is not so different from Windows 10, once you move the taskbar menu to the correct position.

To be fair, I am inclined to put up with minor OS annoyances. I mostly use Edge, but if I couldn't uninstall it it would not make me tear my hair out.

It's less that you can't uninstall it, it's more that it's there and opens all the time regardless of your preferences. You go through the menus to set it to <other browser> and then for no reason at all a random update means everything is reset and it's stuffing edge down your throat again and you have to go change all the preferences. Again. Or it works fine for a week and and then an HTML file opens and its opened in Edge. For no reason I can understand? I'd like to tell it no thank you, I'll use something else then be left alone to use something else. It's the insistence, the constant intrusion that bothers me.

 

[Mordac]

"Drag and drop" is one of the core, basic usage principles of Windows. What other way do people create desktop shortcuts? Do other people go looking in the Program Files folder for the program they want a shortcut for, find the executable by hand, then right click on it and hit "Send to Desktop (Create Shortcut)" ?

I do, yes. And have done since forever.

 

[thedood04]

The jank start menu is my biggest problem with Windows 11. And that was easily fixed by a third party program.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

"Drag and drop" is one of the core, basic usage principles of Windows. What other way do people create desktop shortcuts? Do other people go looking in the Program Files folder for the program they want a shortcut for, find the executable by hand, then right click on it and hit "Send to Desktop (Create Shortcut)" ?

Worse than that. I select "Create Shortcut" and then I move it to where I want on the desktop.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

It's less that you can't uninstall it, it's more that it's there and opens all the time regardless of your preferences. You go through the menus to set it to <other browser> and then for no reason at all a random update means everything is reset and it's stuffing edge down your throat again and you have to go change all the preferences. Again. Or it works fine for a week and and then an HTML file opens and its opened in Edge. For no reason I can understand? I'd like to tell it no thank you, I'll use something else then be left alone to use something else. It's the insistence, the constant intrusion that bothers me.

The ability to ignore annoying things is a life skill whose importance is inadequately unappreciated.